How to Pray To The Lord

When it comes to the subject of prayer, the one question we receive the most from our readers is exactly how do I pray to the Lord?

If you do not learn how to properly pray to the Lord, you are never going to be able to fully accomplish all of your divine destiny for Him, as there will be many times in your journey with God that He is simply going to have to answer some of your personal prayers if anything is ever going to get accomplished.

If God does not answer some of your personal prayers from time to time, then you are never going to make it from one step to another. There will be no promotions and advancements. If God is not listening to and answering some of your specific prayer requests, then you will never find who you were supposed to be marrying in this life and which jobs you were supposed to be taking.

And if you do not take the specific jobs God will be wanting you to take in this life, then you will never reach what your true calling and divine destiny would have been in Him in this life.

In our article titled, “The Basics of the Christian Walk,” we give you 10 basic areas you will need to focus on if you want to enter into the real walk with our Lord. And one of these areas is developing a good, strong, prayer life with the Lord.

If you do not develop a good, strong, prayer life with the Lord, you will never make it out of the dugout in your divine destiny with the Lord. You will forever stay benched in that dugout, as you will find out very quickly that only God has the full supernatural power to really make anything happen in your life.

As Jesus has already told us, you will end up laboring in vain if you try to build the house of your life instead of letting God build the house of your life. In other words, God has to be in total control of every aspect and detail of your life if you are ever going to have any chance of fully completing all of His perfect plan and destiny for your life.

Since so many people continue to ask us this question on how to pray to the Lord, I thought I would draw up this article for all of them. Even though some of these specific areas will be talked about in depth in some of the other articles in our Prayer Secrets section, I want to put all of this together in a nice, neat, outline format so you can see exactly what you will need to focus on so you can develop that good, strong, prayer life with the Lord.

Here are 10 good, basic, prayer strategies you can take with the Lord that will really help you in being able to establish that good, strong, prayer life with Him.

I will first list them in a numbered, bolded format so you can have all of them right at the top of this article. Then I will go into each one of them individually so you can see exactly what you will need to do with each one of them.

1. There is No “Set” or “Magical” Way to Pray to the Lord
2. Pray to God the Father in the Name of Jesus Christ
3. Seek to Establish a Good, Personal Relationship With the Lord
4. Make Sure Your Prayers Always Line Up With the Perfect Will of God for Your Life
5. Back Up Your Prayers With Specific Scripture Verses When Appropriate
6. Do Not Be Afraid to Actually Write Your Prayers Out to the Lord
7. Do Not Be Afraid to Go Into Prevailing Type Prayer When It Will Be Needed
8. Ask the Holy Spirit to Help You With Your Prayer Life
9. Ask Others to Pray in Agreement With You When It Will Be Needed
10. Always Include Prayers of Thanksgiving From Time to Time

If you will seek to implement each one of these basic prayer strategies in your own personal prayer life with the Lord, you will dramatically improve the quality of your prayer life with Him. And if you can develop this good, strong, effective, prayer life with the Lord, then there will be no stopping you as your proceed full steam ahead in the divine destiny that He already has set up for your life.

1. There is No “Set” or “Magical” Way to Pray to the Lord

When it comes to your own personal prayer life with the Lord, the very first thing I want to emphasize is that there is no “set” or “magical” way to pray to the Lord.

When people first write in asking us this question, many of them will ask us to write out prayers for them. But what we tell most of them, unless the Lord is leading us to do otherwise, is for them to write out their own personal prayers to the Lord, with all of the words coming direct from their own hearts and their own minds, not from ours.

Just be totally yourself when you pray to the Lord. Do not try and imitate the way other people may pray to Him. I am sure you have all seen pastors and some of our leaders really belt out some real powerful prayers to the Lord. And when you see some of these very eloquently worded prayers from some of these leaders, you will find yourself getting a bit intimidated and dismayed since you may not be able to use the same kind of language they are using.

One of the main reasons we have put up some of our own personal prayers in the Testimonies Section of our site was so we can show you some of the different types of prayer strategies you can take with the Lord, especially when having to deal with adverse types of situations where you have to go more on the offensive in order to be able to totally defeat it.

Feel free to use some of our phrases and strategies in these types of heavier prayers, but always try to make it as personal as you can with the Lord. And the way you make it personal with the Lord is by using your own words from your own heart and from your own mind.

2. Pray to God the Father in the Name of Jesus Christ

The next thing we tell people is to always direct all of their basic prayers to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself tells us to do this in the verse I will list below.

We can talk to, fellowship with, and worship and praise both Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But when it comes to basic, direct, prayer requests, all of these basic prayer requests should be directed to God the Father in the name of Jesus.

Here are two key verses from the Bible telling us to do this:

1. “But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. But when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathens do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. In this manner, therefore, pray:Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” (Matthew 6:6-13)
2. “… Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” (John 16:23-24)

Notice in both of these verses Jesus is telling us to pray direct to His Father, not to Him, the Holy Spirit, or to any dead saints who are now up in heaven.

If you would like to see more commentary on this, along with some additional Scripture verses, go to our article titled, “Prayer Secret #13 – Pray to God the Father in the Name of Jesus Christ.”

3. Seek to Establish a Good, Personal Relationship With the Lord

If you want to be able to establish a good, strong, prayer life with the Lord, one of the first things you will need to do is seek to establish a good, intimate, personal relationship with Him.

The Bible tells us to seek after the face of God, not His hand. Seeking after the face of God means you are attempting to make direct contact with Him in order to establish a strong personal relationship with Him. You are not seeking after the Lord to try and manipulate Him for your own personal gain and profit.

As you will l see in the major power verse I will now give you, you have to be truly abiding and living in the Lord before you are going to have any major success in your personal prayer life with Him.

Here is this most powerful verse giving you a major fundamental piece of revelation that you will need to get set up before you can expect to have a good, strong, prayer life with the Lord.

“IF YOU ABIDE IN ME, AND MY WORDS ABIDE IN YOU, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.” (John 15:7)

Notice Jesus starts this passage out with the words “If.” If you abide in Jesus and He abides in you, then you can ask what you desire from His Father and then it will be done for you.

You can tell by the way Jesus is wording this verse, that He is talking about people who have established a very good personal relationship with Him. The word “abiding” in this verse is a very intense word. This word is telling us that God wants us to be truly abiding in Him, truly living and breathing in Him.

However, if by chance you are in a backslidden state and you have lost the good personal relationship you use to have with the Lord, do not let this stop or deter you. God will always take you back and re-establish the good personal relationship that He used to have with you.

We already have another article in our site on how to get back on track with the Lord if you have fallen into a backslidden state with Him over the years. The title of this article is “God will Take You Back – No Matter How Far You Have Backslid.”

4. Make Sure Your Prayers Always Line Up With the Perfect Will of God for Your Life

The next thing you must do in your personal prayer life with the Lord is to always make sure that all of your personal prayer requests will be in His perfect will for your life. If it is not, then there is a very good chance that God will not be answering your personal prayer, and you will thus be wasting both your time and His time by even asking for it in the first place.

Here is the verse that will tell us that all of our prayers always have to be in the perfect will of God for our lives:

“Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything ACCORDING TO HIS WILL, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.” (1 John 5:14)

Key on the words, “according to His will.” Notice this verse says that if we ask anything according to His will, then we will have a very good chance of getting that prayer actually answered by Him. God will always know what is best for us in every single matter in our life. This is why we always have to rely on His wisdom and knowledge as to what should be brought into our lives.

For more in-depth commentary on this piece of revelation from the Lord, go to our article titled, “Prayer Secret #2 – The Will of God.” In this article we give you testimonies of two people who got into major trouble with the Lord, as they were praying for soulmates who were not in the perfect will of God for their lives.

5. Back Up Your Prayers With Specific Scripture Verses When Appropriate

Another major thing you can do when it will be appropriate to do so, is to back up your personal prayers to the Lord with specific verses from the Bible that will pertain to the specific issue you are dealing with.

For instance, if you are praying to God for a physical healing, then you will dramatically increase your chances of getting your prayer answered if you will find 5-15 good verses on healing, and then quote them back to God in your own personal prayer to Him.

Ask God to move off the wording and promises of these kinds of verses. Tell God that you will stand firm on these verses and that you will keep prevailing with Him until He moves to either heal you or another person you may be praying for.

God loves it when you quote His own Word back to Him. This shows Him that you have done your homework by looking up and finding these kinds of verses in the first place. And then when you start quoting these verses back to Him in the actual prayer itself, and you tell Him that you are now going to stand firm on the wording and promises of these verses, you are showing Him incredible faith and belief in His Word.

And sometimes this is exactly how major miracles are brought down from heaven.

If you need a list of good healing verses to use in your own personal prayers to the Lord, you can go to our article titled, “Healing Verses of the Bible.”

In this article we give you 93 of the very best healing verses in all of the Bible. You can simply pick which ones will apply to the specific situation you are dealing with, and then put them into your own personal prayer to the Lord.

If you need God’s protection from an enemy who is trying to come against you, you can go to our article titled, “Battle Verses of the Bible.” In this article are 100 of the very best battle verses in the Bible that will show you how God can fully protect you against whatever enemy that may try and come against you in this life.

6. Do Not Be Afraid to Actually Write Your Prayers Out to the Lord

Another very powerful strategy we have picked up with the Lord over the years is to actually write out some of our personal prayers to Him, especially if the prayer request is on the heavier side.

You will see some of these prayers actually written out in some of the personal testimonies in our site. Many people did not know how to go on the offensive in their prayers to the Lord, so God had us write out some of these prayers for them – but from there, they each had to read the prayer back to the Lord on their own. And then once they did, God moved very quickly and very dramatically to answer each one of their prayers.

By writing out some of your personal prayers to the Lord, and then reading them back to Him, you will make sure that you cover all of the main points you will want to cover with Him. And again, this will show God that you mean serious business with Him by taking this kind of extra step with Him. God will listen to and answer some of your written prayers just as well as He will do with prayers that come to Him spontaneously off the top of your head and heart.

For more information on this particular strategy, we would highly recommend that you read our article titled, “Prayer Secret #4 – Stating Your Case Before God.” In this article, we show you the power there really is when you state your specific reasons to the Lord as to why He should even consider answering your specific prayer request in the first place.

We give you an example of when Moses did this with God the Father in the wilderness setting with the children of Israel, along with a personal testimony of where this particular strategy literally turned the tide on a terminal cancer case that God had brought me in on.

This particular prayer strategy literally ended up saving this man’s life. He had received a full and complete healing from the Lord of the terminal cancer that he had been inflicted with once we incorporated this particular strategy into the actual healing prayer itself.

7. Do Not Be Afraid to Go Into Prevailing Type Prayer When It Will Be Needed

Another major prayer strategy that you will need to take with the Lord from time to time is what is called a prevailing type of prayer. This is the type of prayer that you will pray more than one time with the Lord. This is where you keep on asking, seeking and knocking until God moves to either answer your prayer or He tells you to let the matter go.

Sometimes you have to show God that you have a major desire for what you are asking Him for. And the way you do this is by asking Him more than one time for what you are asking Him for. Sometimes you have to show God major intensity and desire in your prayers to Him before He will move to actually answer the prayer. This is where you have to show God that you mean serious business with Him and that you are going to keep praying to Him until something happens either one way or the other.

You will definitely want to use a prevailing kind of prayer when you are praying for something that is on the heavier side, such as when someone is dying of a terminal disease. Sometimes God will test your resolve, determination, and desire before He will move to answer this kind of heavier prayer request.

We have 3 very good articles on prevailing prayer in the Prayer Secrets section of our site. The title of these 3 articles are the following:

• “Prayer Secret #8 – Praying for Something More Than One Time”
• “Prayer Secret #9 – Do Not Lose Heart”
• “Prayer Secret #11 – Mighty Prevailing Prayer”

8. Ask the Holy Spirit to Help You With Your Prayer Life

This next major prayer strategy is one that many Christians do not realize they have available to them from the Lord. This next strategy is where you literally ask the Holy Spirit Himself to come and help you with your own personal prayer life to the Lord.

The Bible tells us that not only is the Holy Spirit our Helper, Guide, and Teacher in this life, but He also has the specific ministry of helping us out with our own personal prayer life with the Lord.

Here are two very good verses that will show you that the Holy Spirit can help you in your own personal prayer life with the Lord.

1. “Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought …” (Romans 8:26)
   
2. “Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8:26-27)

The first verse is telling us that we have an actual weakness in our prayer life with the Lord. It says that we may not know what we should be praying for. As a result, the Holy Spirit will be right there to help us in this specific weakness.

The 2nd verse then adds some more revelation to this when it tells us that the Holy Spirit Himself will pray and intercede for us before God the Father. So not only do we have the Holy Spirit willing to help us out with our prayer life to the Lord, but He will also at times take over and pray directly for us to God the Father.

If you will ask the Holy Spirit to help you with your personal prayer life to the Lord, here are some of the specific things He can help you out with:

• What to pray for
• What not to pray for
• How to word your prayers to God
• What particular Scripture verses to use in your prayers
• The timing factor – exactly when to pray for something
• The correct battle strategies to use
• The correct angle and point of view to use with the Lord
• How many times to pray to God for the request
• How long to stay with the prayer request
• Whether or not to call in other believers to pray in agreement with you
• Whether or not there is anything else that you will need to do on your end before God will grant the prayer request

Since the Holy Spirit is God and Lord Himself, He will have perfect knowledge on all of the above strategies. And you can receive this kind of divine help from Him if you will just simply ask Him to come and help you out.

I cannot tell you how much more your prayer life will dramatically improve with the Lord if you will have the Holy Spirit help you out with all of this. This particular prayer strategy is one that every single Christian should be doing since we all have our own individual weaknesses in this area.

9. Ask Others to Pray in Agreement With You When It Will Be Needed

Another very powerful, prayer strategy you can use from time to time is when you will call in other believers to pray in agreement with you. Jesus Himself gives us this specific strategy in the following verse:

“Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:19)

Many of the times God will simply want you coming to Him one-on-one in your own personal prayers to Him. He will not want you to be bothering other mighty prayer warriors with something that can be easily handled between you and Him.

However, there will be other times that He will want you to team up with a few other believers and approach Him with this prayer of agreement. And again, this is where the Holy Spirit can help guide you on this. One of the things He will help you with is when to approach God just all by yourself, or when you should approach God with a few other believers by your side.

We already have another article in our site on this topic. The title of this article is, “Prayer Secret #6 – The Prayer of Agreement.” Please click on this link if you would like to see some additional commentary on this particular prayer strategy you can take with the Lord.

10. Always Include Prayers of Thanksgiving From Time to Time

And last, but certainly not least, is to always make sure you include some personal prayers of thanksgiving to the Lord with what He has already done in your life.

Again, we already have another article on this topic in the Prayer Secrets section of our site. The title of this article is, “Prayer Secret #12 – Prayers of Thanksgiving.”

In this article, we give you some main verses from the Bible showing you that you always need to be giving thanks to the Lord for everything that He has already done for you, starting with the gift of eternal salvation you have already received from Him through the blood of His Son Jesus Christ.

It is very easy to start taking God for granted and forgetting where all of your blessings are really coming from in this life. By always continuing to give prayers of thanksgiving to the Lord, this will help keep you humble and serve as a very good reminder where all of the blessings in your life are really coming from.

Conclusion

All of the above prayer strategies will give you more than enough information and knowledge on how to develop a very strong, effective, prayer life with the Lord. As we have said before, if you do not develop a good, strong prayer life with the Lord, you are not going to get very far in your divine destiny with Him.

The reason being is that there will simply come times where you will not be able to make anything happen on your own. And unless you learn how to pray to God so He can remove roadblocks and mountains when they do appear in your life, you will stay stuck and grounded right where you are at until God moves on your behalf.